Monday, May 4, 2009

Hotaling's Kangaroo Whiskey

It is widely known that A.P.Hotaling had many interests worldwide including holdings in the Australian Colonies beginning in the late 1860s. His first introduction of the J.H.Cutter Whiskies in that area was in 1871, when he began shipping cases of the product to the White Hart Hotel in Melbourne. Henry Edwards, proprietor of that establishment, served as his agent in the Victoria area of South Australia. It is claimed that he shipped as many as 1500 cases of Cutter Whiskey per month to that establishment, but to my knowledge very few bottles have been recovered there. It is likely that any old dumps, or "tips" as they are called there, have long been covered by subsequent construction and expansion of that city.Included here are two newspaper "announcements", heralding the arrival of the famous Cutter Whiskies to Australia. These were clipped from the Melbourne Argus, the prominent Victoria newspaper of the early 1870s.